Bomboy - Dev Team Weekly Update 2/26

At our meeting this week, everyone except for one member showed up, and we decided to start writing our game's narrative. For our homework, we are to separately write our own version of how we want the game to go. Then, next meeting, we are going to get together and mesh them all together to make a narrative we are all happy with. Here is the progress in the document so far:

Anthony

1. To add

Audrey

1. Castle
1. Knight
2. (Princess) Retrieve Item
3. Escape Castle

Cody

1. Act I
1. Castle
1. Princess is in captivity of a dragon who has taken over the castle. A high level knight (you) is battling through the hordes of high level enemies. You finally reach the boss level, the dragon. You battle it out, but then you die. POV switches to the princess. Princess escapes the dragon somehow, and leaves the castle and ends up in a far away place. 
2. Farmlands
1. Princess ends up in a village in a farm. Everyone recognizes her as the princess OR no one recognizes her and she starts off as a nobody
2. AND/OR There is a virus spread over the village and all the villagers have become mutants because of a disease that has overtaken the village. (The disease may be a part of something bigger and may have to do with the dragon)
3. The princess fights through the hordes of mutant villagers (who may have family and kids so that there is some sort of moral aspect to this. (like how in HL2, in the headcrab zombie infested town, the zombies’ moans, when audio is reversed, actually scream “heellllp mee”). 
3. Swamplands
2. Act (whatever the last act will be)
1. Castle
1. The princess finally reaches the castle

At this meeting I also told them about the enemy sprites I am in the process of making: I made two bat sprites and still making a dark wizard. At the meeting, we also decided to make a smaller enemy that bounces around and drops a projectile that hurts the player. So that's what I am going to be making the next week after I finish the wizard. Moving slowly but surely.

Bomboy - Schedule 2/20-2/24

Monday - No School
Tuesday - Enemy Sprites
Wednesday - Wizard Sprite
Thursday - ^
Friday - Absent

Bomboy - Dev Team Weekly Update 2/19

2/19/17

• Round 
• Finn: Castle_Concept.jpg in Art/_Spr_Concepts 

• Cody: Working on boss music 
• Anthony and David: Worked on concepts for enemy types 
• Concept 1 
• Enemy that bounces across the screen 
• Drops a projectile at the top of its arc 
• Moves in the opposite direction if it hits something 
• Like the Gumba in Mario 
• Concept 2 
• Tiki Mask Guy 
• Starts off rooted in the ground 
• Spits projectiles at you 
• Comes out of the ground when you get close 
• Leaves a hole in the ground that you can go in 
• There could be a number of things in this hole 
• Special items 
• Enemies 
• Mini boss fights 
• A door that grants access to the next level 
• Concept 3 
• Whirlwind of cold air that freezes you if it hits you 
• Can be used in combination with the first enemy concept 
• This enemy freezes you, the first enemy comes and drops its projectile on you 
• Concept 4 
• Enemy that lays eggs and throws them at you 
• When an egg hits the ground it breaks open and a smaller version of the enemy comes out 
• This makes this enemy a priority because if you don’t kill it soon it will keep creating more enemies 
• Concept 5 
• Dark Wizard 
• Good enemy for the castle 
• Shoots shadow balls that follow the player 
• Like the needle gun in Halo 
• Shadow balls can do damage to the player as well as other enemies 
• So other enemies can be used as a shield from the shadow balls 
• Concept 6 
• A bird that drops something 
• Could drop something good or bad 

David: “The concepts above kind of follow a theme of suffocation which fits into the whole female empowerment motif because sometimes the burdens of being a female can seem suffocating” - like in the game Problem Attic

Health/Lives System?

• 3 options 
• Health bar 
• Player dies when health bar reaches 0 
• Lives system 
• Like in Mario 
• Start with 3 lives 
• Chances to gain a “1 UP” 
• When you die and you still have lives you restart at a checkpoint 
• When you die and run out of lives you restart from the beginning 
• Combination of the 2 above 
• You have lives 
• For each life you have a health bar 
• You can take damage that will decrement the health bar 
• Once the health bar hits 0 you die and lose that life 
• Restart at checkpoint with 1 less life and a full health bar 
• When you die and lose all lives you restart from the beginning 
• If we do this system then we don’t need the knight to lose armor when for the intro, because instead he could just have a ridiculous amount of health and lives 

Need to decide on a narrative direction that the game will move in so level designers can begin designing future levels.

Bomboy - Schedule 2/13-2/17

Monday - Knight Sprites
Tuesday - ^
Wednesday - ^
Thursday - Enemy Concept Art
Friday - Enemy Concept Art

Bomboy - Dev Team Weekly Update 2/12

This weeks update isn't going to be that exciting because most of the members were sick or had a prior engagement today during our meeting. That means there was only two of us: Anthony and I. However, we did get a small update from some of the other members.
Meeting Notes:

• AUDREY - Knight sprites on Google Drive. Needs to complete 3 more.
• Once done with Knight, going to make the enemies (bats and dragons)
• CODY - Music. Maybe good for a different level but not the first one.
• Make more music!!
• ANTHONY - Going to start recoding everything.
• SKYLAR - Still doing level design.
• DAVID - Idk.
• Meeting up with Anthony this week to discuss future level design.
• FINN - Didn't have a task.
• This week is going to work on castle concept art (kind of like a teaser thing)

Here were my contributions to this meeting:

My job for this meeting was to get started on the knight sprites (last time my concept sprite was confirmed). Since it was approved, I made the still in the correct size, made the left and right steps for the walk animation, and created the attack animation. All that I need left are the jump up/down and wall slide/grab sprites. That's probably what I am going to be doing for next week.
Our audio guy, Cody, while absent, did send us his assignment for this week:

Here is the link to the Music! (It's just a Google Drive link.)

Last week he created different footstep sounds, this week he created his first version of the background music called "Home Again." He asked for criticism and we decided that this particular track isn't what we're looking for for this specific level. We're probably going to use this music at a different spot in the game, but Cody is going to make a variety to choose from.
Anthony for this week started looking at the source code and began a new Game Maker Project.
As for the other members, they did not send anything in for the meeting and I doubt they really finished anything in the first place... (Finn didn't have an assignment, I don't know what David was supposed to be doing, and Skylar admitted he did not finish the first level design concept.)
Right now, I feel like I am definitely the one doing most of the work here... which I guess is going to level out in the future... but right now that kind of stinks. They tried giving me even MORE work (castle concept art) and while I'd really like to do it, they already have me swamped with other tasks so I pushed that one off on someone else. I don't want to do it because I like doing the concept art of things but I also feel like everyone should be contributing and so far I haven't seen everyone trying as hard as I am.

Bomboy - Schedule 2/6-2/10

Monday - Knight Sprites
Tuesday - ^
Wednesday - ^
Thursday - ^
Friday - Watched Small Bot Videos

Bomboy - Dev Team Weekly Update 2/5

Every meeting my team has, we type a basic outline of what we discussed. Our topic of discussion involves going over what we accomplished the past week and then we usually delve into game concept and story. Here's the notes I made this meeting and I will elaborate after:

• FINN - Storyboard for Title (In Project Workbook).
• SKYLAR - SLACKER. Jk.
• AUDREY - Knight Animations (Found in Discord). Still in progress.
• ANTHONY & DAVID - Level Design (Found in Trello).
• Lots of metaphors and multiple concepts.
• In all: the Knight dies and the sword itself frees the Princess.
• Issue: Knight dies before supposed to (lots of health?? = symbol?)
• Ridiculous Health Bar
• Armor disappears from damage. Really not as powerful as thought. Dies.
• At the end of the level, knight has no armor and therefore dies really quickly from boss.
• Intro: Memes.
• CHARACTER TRAIT: Princess never picks up armor because she doesn’t need it and tosses it aside.
• Have Princess learn a ranged attack. Meets Wizard and learns fireball spell.
• EVERYONE GET Game Maker version 1.4.1763
• Level Flow: First part of game should just be inside the castle; there should be a boss before she leaves. Knight chasing her to get honor of saving her? 
• Princess needs to save childhood friend whom is stuck in another castle
• We should write the story first

As you can see, we discussed everyone's accomplishments, where they could be found, and some notes on how they got to their conclusion and other people's comments on how to fix it/make it better. You can also see most of our discussion this time revolved around the level design. This is because we do not have a fully written out story and we are trying to find the best story to create the best gameplay (long, fun, and makes sense). We threw around a bunch of ideas and basically concluded that before we can really make any gameplay, we need to finish the story so we have a direction. However, this time we could not finish the story because two of our members were not at the meeting. Below I am going to post pictures of everyone's development (except mine because I'm about to go change stuff anyway, just know I made three knight sprites):

This is the storyboard Finn worked on for the intro screen. There is going to be an animation where the title appears incorrectly, so the Princess leaps up and slashes the wrong part away to reveal the real title of the game and then the options. We are in discussion on how we are going to make the animation and who.

And here is just one of the concept level design docs Anthony and David made. I am not posting the others because they are really repetitive. This is basically depicting how the game is just going to start as the player being a Knight in the last main boss battle, which is unusual because this is the start of the game. They are almost going to defeat the boss when they die, and their sword flies down and frees the Princess. Suddenly, the player is now controlling the Princess and the player realizes all of the previous gameplay was a metaphor and they must now escape as the Princess. We ran into some changes during the discussion and Skylar this week is going to make a real layout with the actual environment sprites.

Our audio guy was not at the meeting and therefore did not give us his 8 bit music he is working on.

In all, we discovered that while we are doing important work currently, we need to discuss and finish the story with the group first before we are going to get anywhere productive with the game.

Bomboy - Schedule 1/30-2/3

Monday - Fixed Knight Concept
Tuesday - Finished Knight Still Sprite
Wednesday - Working on walking sprites
Thursday - ^^
Friday - ^^